site.btaNew Parliament to Have 25 Standing Committees

The new Bulgarian National Assembly, elected on June 9, will have 25 standing committees, the MPs resolved on Friday, approving parts of the draft parliamentary rules of organization and procedure.

A Committee on Demographic Policy, Children and the Family will be set up. The Constitutional Affairs Committee and the Legal Affairs Committee will merge into a Committee on Constitutional and Legal Affairs.

The Committee on the European Union, the Schengen Area and the Eurozone and the Committee on Oversight of EU Funds will be disbanded. In their place, the National Assembly will set up a Committee on EU Affairs and Oversight of EU Funds.

As before, the composition of the standing committees, except for the one on the secret services, will be based on the size of the parliamentary groups.

The legislature defeated a motion by Georgi Svilenski (BSP for Bulgaria), who proposed that the National Assembly should be required to allocate seats on the standing committees to independent MPs. This leaves in place the rule that the Assembly may put independents on standing committees.

It takes at least 10 MPs to form a parliamentary group, the Assembly resolved. It rejected proposals to allow the existence of so-called parliamentary nomads.

The rule remains that if a parliamentary group ceases to exist, its members will become independent MPs and may not join another parliamentary group or form a new group.

An MP who has left a parliamentary group, or has been expelled from it, will become an independent MP, may not bid to join another parliamentary group and may not be admitted to another group.

Independents may not form a parliamentary group. Existing parliamentary groups may not merge or split, the National Assembly resolved.